Bandwidth vs. Latency

Most of us have come across the terms “bandwidth” and “latency” but not all of us know in depth about the concepts that these terms stand for. It becomes essential to understand bandwidth and latency in order to understand frontend web performance. These two components impact substantially the speed and the responsiveness of one’s connectivity to the Internet.  Let us know more about these two components, without further ado.

Bandwidth

The term “bandwidth” refers to the rate at which data is transferred in a given duration of time and a communication band’s width is specified by it. If the width of a communication band increases, more data can go through it simultaneously.

Bandwidth is used in the context of the maximum capacity of one’s Internet connection. It isn’t used for its responsiveness. Bandwidth is a way for measuring data transfer. A high bandwidth is associated with faster Internet speed, which results in less time for data transfer. Bandwidth is frequently mistaken for the speed of the Internet. Bandwidth is essentially the volume of data that is capable of being sent over a connection in a given amount of time. It is calculated in Mbps (megabits per second).

When one is using multiple devices simultaneously, one needs more bandwidth to manage all of it seamlessly. Activities, such as, streaming as well as gaming, along with some other high-capacity activities require a specific amount of bandwidth speed to deliver the user experience that is devoid of buffering or lag.

To digress, with regard to our Internet browsing activities, we visit numerous websites daily for various purposes. These websites are rendered accessible through the service of web hosting. In web hosting server space is provided along with the necessary services and technologies for making websites accessible over the Internet. Web hosting, as a service, is provided by web hosting companies. The most competent web hosting companies are referred to as the “Best Cloud Hosting Company”, the “Best Website Hosting Company”, the “Best Windows Hosting Company” etc.

Returning to our main topic, with regard to the speed of the Internet, it is usually talked about in terms of bandwidth.  Bandwidth does play a significant role in determining the speed with which web pages load but regardless of the amount of data that can be sent and received at any given time, it is capable of travelling only as fast as latency permits. Now, let us know what latency is all about.

Latency

Latency refers to the amount of time that is taken by data to travel from one location to another. It depends on the physical distance that data needs to traverse to reach its destination. In the event of data transfer, the data packet travels physically from a particular location to another via wired connections or by wireless means. The time taken by a data packet to reach from one location to another is dictated by network latency. Unlike bandwidth, the lower the latency, the better the Internet speed that one gets. The problem of lag or buffering is usually associated with latency.

How to Optimize Network Bandwidth

Certain measures can be taken into account and certain factors need to be understood for optimizing network bandwidth. Let us briefly discuss these. One of the main factors is to understand the difference that exists between throughput and bandwidth. Throughput refers to the capacity of one’s processing unit for sending and receiving data, whereas bandwidth is one’s communication channel’s size. Hence, it is quite possible that one’s hardware fails to utilize one’s maximum bandwidth.

It is important to weigh one’s performance tradeoffs. Insufficient bandwidth is not always what causes poor performance. It is essential to keep track of one’s links to remain aware of how busy these are.  Moreover, it is important to opt for the right monitoring tools. In the context of under-utilized or over-utilized bandwidth, there are many monitoring tools for finding out information about one’s resources’ allocation. Any effective monitoring tool can aid in providing valuable information for optimizing one’s bandwidth.

Another important measure is to engage in proactive capacity planning. Regardless of how time consuming it is, one should spend time for capacity planning. Additionally, the busiest links should be prioritized.

These are some of the main ways which aid in optimizing network bandwidth.

How to Reduce Network Latency

In order to control latency, attention should be paid to frontend performance optimization. It is vital to have information about how one’s visitors connect to one’s site. Any analytical software can be used for this purpose to gain information about the type of devices that are being used for accessing one’s site. This is helpful in providing guidance with regard to allocation of web resources.

Another helpful measure is to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) which aids in reducing latency. A Content Delivery Network is a network that consists of distributed servers, which enable faster data transfer, based on the geographical location of a user.

It is essential to monitor network bottlenecks and analyze these. Bottlenecks should be identified by making note of one’s network traffic flows during various times of a day. More processing power or more network adapters should be added to a server for reducing congested network nodes’ latency. Latency can also be reduced by decreasing the number of nodes and through centralizing points for network connections.

Additionally, it is extremely important to know one’s cloud infrastructure and how data travels from in-house equipment via different servers to the end users’ devices; for steering optimization efforts effectively. In order to attain reduced latency one can implement HTTP/2, load lesser resources, use prefetching methods and configure browser cache. For data/information to reach users swiftly anywhere on the globe, latency needs to be reduced, which can be achieved by following these measures.

Conclusion

To recapitulate, bandwidth refers to the amount of data that is transferred per second and latency refers to the amount of time that is taken by this data to reach its destination from its source. Bandwidth and latency are the primary components that affect Internet performance and to attain high performance an effective collaboration, between these two components, needs to be attained.

Source: https://www.htshosting.org/knowledge-base/technology/121/bandwidth-vs-latency